There are only a few Irish or Irish trained
homeopaths in UK homeopathic history, but the darling of them all is
probably Dr Robert T Cooper, founder of the Irish Forestry Society, who
died of Influenza in London in 1903. Then there is Dr Richard Hughes, of
Brighton, whose only Irish connection was that he dropped down dead on a
Dublin pavement in 1902 with the manuscript for the British Journal of
Homeopathy proofs [he was editor] stuffed in his back pocket!

Dr. Cooper hailed from Cooper’s Hill, Co. Carlow
and was a graduate AB 1864, LM 1864, MCh MB 1865, MD 1871 and MA 1883,
of Trinity College, Dublin [Nisbet, 1913, p.770]. He thus easily ranks
as one of the most highly qualified physicians of that period. He was an
assistant Physician and Surgeon for Ear Diseases at the London
Homeopathic Hospital and a member of the British Homeopathic Society
[MBHS].

In 1866, he "settled in private practice at
Southampton," [Obit, 459], moving to London in 1874. He had two
busy London medical practices, one at Notting Hill and the other in
Hanover Square. He was a key member of the Cooper Club named after him
[Blackie, 1976, p.158]. He published Cancer & Cancer Symptoms
1900; and Lectures onDiseases of the Ears, 2nd Edition
1880 [see Watson, 141-47; Homeopathic Medical Directory, 1874,
50; and Homeopathic Medical Directory, 1895]. Apart from numerous
articles in the Homeopathic World, mostly about materia medica,
he also published a series of articles in the Dublin Medical Review.

Briefly, we can say that Cooper was, like most of his
generation, a low potency man who mainly used mother tinctures and 3x as
his mainstay. Such '3xers' of the last century were opposed to the
higher potencies 'on principle', which at that time was practically
everything above 6x, and to the indiscriminate use of nosodes and
unproven remedies. They sought justification for these views from
Hahnemann, who never promoted the use of high potencies, even though he
made use of them occasionally. But as an ardent '3xer' Cooper would
never have used higher potencies or nosodes, and would certainly have
regarded them with a derisive scepticism. 3xers were afraid to get too
close to the Avogadro limit and seemed very content with the clinical
results they obtained with their material doses.

He was probably the most conservative and least
interesting of the 4 members of the Club named after him. Except, of
course, for his highly innovative 'arborivital' system. Cooper and
Burnett were also great cancer doctors and they maintained that in the
treatment of such advanced and physical diseases the lower potencies and
tinctures produce the best work.

He had a longstanding interest in botany and the use
of single doses left "to act for weeks and possibly months
undisturbed by repetition or further medication,"[Obit, 461].
He often used unproven remedies justifying this approach by "studying
them by their habits, and…the minds of plants," [Obit, 461].
He was also interested in common features in the provings of closely
related members of certain plant families, such as Rosacae, Solanacae,
Labiatae, Compositae, "Lobelias and Crucifers." [Obit,
462]. There seems little doubt that he was a "source of much
therapeutic enlightenment," [Obit, 463], and "essentially
a plant-lover and tree-lover," [Obit, 463], yet as a person he
had "the most affectionate and tender of hearts and the
sensitiveness of genius…the warmth and humour of the Irish race,"
[Obit, 464-5]. A keen athlete and a "man of splendid physique, a
swimmer – for many years he had bathed in the Serpentine all the year
round," [Obit, 464], yet he also believed that "sympathy
was essential to his proper mental expansion and development."
[Obit, 464]

Cooper's Arborivital Medicine

It is not commonly known, but there is a stream of
ideas running through from ancient herbalism and vitalism into
homeopathy. This lineage runs on through people like Cooper and then
onto Dr Edward Bach of Flower Essence fame. This theme applied mainly to
the mode of preparation of the remedies and also in the choice of which
part of a plant to use. They all used tinctures of plants which were
prepared using proof spirit. In the case of Cooper and Bach the unusual
aspect is that they both chose living plant tissue immersed in
proof spirit [or spring water] and exposed to sunlight. It is not
certain what the justification for this technique was, nor where the
idea originally came from. It is not mentioned by Hahnemann. It is
probably more ancient and my guess is that it derives, like most
'medical nostrums', from people like Paracelsus.

Dr Edward
BACH (1886-1936)

Here are Cooper's directions on the topic:

"The preparation of remedies used are tinctures
made on the spot from living plants, proof spirit being employed for the
sake of preserving their inherent properties...by allowing the spirit to
come into contact with the living plant, the branch, while still
attached, being kept plunged in the spirit and exposed to sunlight while
thus immersed, heliosthened, as I term it." [Cooper, 1900, p.xv]

Many within British homeopathy were impressed:

"Dr. Cooper had an uncanny genius for
discovering unusual remedies; some of these he got, no doubt, from old
herbals; but it has been said that he used to lie down before a
flowering plant by the hour, Dragging from it its virtues of healing. He
made extraordinary play, in cancer, with some of his flowers, and one
heard him called 'the man who can cure cancer,’…" [Dr. Margaret
Tyler, in BHJ, 1932 p.136]

Cooper was undoubtedly influenced by Paracelsus in
his ideas about the nature of forces within plants [his 'arborivital
medicine'] and it is possible that he was aware of the work of Goethe or
Steiner, as he clearly believed cancers to be the result of hidden
'growth forces' within the person very similar to the growth-force in
trees and other plants. This influence was pervasive and general,
whereas in the case of Burnett the link to Paracelsus was mainly about
organs and systems, rather than the healing forces within plants. Cooper
makes it clear that his tinctures represent a dose forceful enough to
counteract the growth force of the tumour, and therefore not in need of
any dilution or potentisation [Cooper, 1900, p.3]. He also claims to
have discovered his system from some 30 years of careful observation
[ibid., p.11]

He declared there to be:

"...existing in plant-remedies a force...which
acted by virtue of a power in all respects similar to a germinating
power in the human body." [Cooper, 1900, p.1]

"...in the living plants we get a force which,
if applied...to disease, will arrest its progress and even cause its
dispersal." [ibid., p.3]

It is clearly like a form of 'signatures' to believe
that the healthy force from the plant can then be utilised against the
unhealthy force in the diseased person. It is clearly related to the law
of similars. It is also close to the concept, and probably underpins it,
that disease is powered by an invisible growth-force that is present in
the diseased organ and which can be 'trapped' in the form of sarcodes
and nosodes, prepared therefrom, which can then be used as healing
agents against similar diseases. So here we can see how close,
metaphysically, these tinctures were to the whole nosode habit of late
19th century homeopathy [see Morrell, 1998]:

"Cooper's hypothesis was that a curative ability
or action is inherent in all living plant material, and that this does
not require trituration, succussion or dilution to be
effective....Cooper directed that the tinctures should be administered
in single Drop doses, and that these remedies should be given time to
act fully before being repeated. The dose was administered in powder
form with a single Drop of the tincture on to a Dry tongue and on an
empty stomach." [Bonnard, 1994, p.23]

"He was influenced by the Doctrine of Signatures
and relied on observation of plant structures and
characteristics...Cooper claimed that arborivital remedies were most
suitable in crises which were incurable by any other means, and this
includes homeopathic methods," [ibid., p.23]

So we can discern here a clear justification for the
use of nosodes or disease-products in the more generic concept of
disease-cause as a 'miasm' or essence which resides in the diseased
tissue. This underlying concept, which comes straight from Hahnemann's
Miasm Theory published in The Chronic Diseases of 1828, is echoed
clearly in the work of Cooper, both in his idea that cancer is a result
of a deranged growth-force within the person and that a similar though
healing growth-essence can be extracted from the plant in the form of a
'heliosthened' tincture. This is obviously an area where the ‘doctrine
of signatures’ and the ‘law of similars’ meet.

Regarding Dr. Cooper’s use of potency it is clear
that he mainly used tinctures and 3x. Of all the entries in his ‘Cancer
and Cancer Symptoms’[1895], for example, we can see that Cooper is
clearly a low potency man, preferring the tinctures, 1c and 3x over any
others. 89% of his prescribing is 3x and lower. 38 potencies, out of the
54 listed in the book, are tinctures [=73%], while 9 are 3x [=16.7%].
Two very useful profiles of Cooper’s work are those by Bonnard and
Watson [Bonnard, 1994, Watson, 1989]. The actual basis of his use of
single drop doses of tinctures relates to his belief that the curative
effects of remedies flow not so much from the size of the doses or its
level of dilution, as is commonly thought, but stem from being single,
widely-spaced doses allowed to act fully.

In reporting to colleagues on his US trip to the AIH
congress in 1876, Dr Richard Hughes "was discouraging about
Cooper’s introduction of new remedies…Lippe and Hering…came in for
unfavourable comment, and so did Hempel, who was accused of
Swedenborgian mysticism," [3; 187]

A measure of just how entrenched this outright
opposition to change was, can be judged from the fact that "Dr
Robert Cooper reading a paper…lauding the use of nosodes, was stopped
in his address, hissed, and compelled to leave the meeting – the
assembly refusing to hear him further," [4; 120]. Such
sustained "opposition from the old guard…who prescribed the 6th
potency daily for months on end," [1; 226] rendered the high
potency pioneers even more resolved "to break with tradition of
the low potency men," [5; 135]. For example, Dr Lees Templeton,
"next to Sir John Weir…was the master of Kentian homeopathy
and many doctors came from home and abroad to hear his lectures and to
attend his ward rounds, for he practised what he preached." [6;
142]

Cooper had been holidaying in Switzerland with his
wife and family, when he caught a chill, through "over-exertion
in tennis," [Obit, 465] and then contracted influenza that led
to "congestion of the lungs," [Obit, 465]. A notice of
his death appeared in the Westminster Gazette of September 19th
saying, "his work in Forestry is very well known, he was the
founder and first president of the Irish Forestry Society, which
came into existence a year or two ago," [Obit, 466] and that
his "knowledge of plant-therapeutics being unique,"
[Obit, 466]. He regarded vegetation as the "medium for
protecting man from calamities of all kinds," [Obit, 464] and
that "the national neglect of forestry was to him a source of
the deepest pain." [Obit, 464] He was once described as a "member
of the ancient cult of Tree-Worshippers," [Obit, 464]. To the
ruthless cutting down of forests in past times "Dr Cooper traced
much of the agricultural poverty of his native Ireland," [Obit,
464].